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Saturday, August 29, 2009

Saying "No!" to Profit-Driven Public Higher Education at UT

I have moved reference to a provocative article by a concerned member of the UT community from the sidebar to the center of discussion. Here follows some of its content:


"In the face of $7.8 million in state cuts to higher education, the people who run the University of Toledo (UT) are trying desperately to find ways to cut costs. The immediate response was to notify students that, on top of the 60 percent cut in their Ohio Choice Opportunity Grants awarded by the state, they would be facing a tuition hike next year. At a time when working-class families are suffering from wage cuts, loss of jobs and home foreclosures, this is only one more added worry to those who were subsidized for the prodigious costs of post-secondary education."

"Even more preposterous is, as the Independent Collegian reported, [are] plans to make working people pay for the cuts: 'Aside from looking at programs, administrators will be approaching the various unions which received contractually negotiated salary raises and ask them to consider forfeiting them, [Chief Financial Officer] Scarborough said. According to estimates from last semester, this would free up approximately $6 million annually. Administrators may also consider stopping the previously approved salary raises for those non-union personnel making under $40,000. Personnel making more than that didn't receive a raise'."


"[If high-paid UT administrators] do not seem willing to fork over their bloated salaries, why should regular working people? Why would they be willing to hand out money to private companies like Higher Ed [Holdings] while they attempt to cut workers' pay?"


Read more here:


http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/27/profit-driven-education


(Thanks, Derek, for your commitment to fighting for-profit driven mismanagement and injustices here at UT!)

2 comments:

Bloggie said...

I can't say I am swayed by what a socialist paper has to say--very predictable. But I am even less swayed by what the Jacobs' administration has to say. They are even more predictable. Their modus operandi: Big talk, spend the money, followed by more big talk. I hear that they are big-talking about a new strategic plan! The old one did not work? Or maybe it needs to be adjusted to fit current realities: instead of serving the "human condition" it should say "improving the administrative condition."

Unknown said...

The adminstrative leadership at UT keeps trying to mold themselves after the business model that has recently all to conspicuously proved itself a big failure. They think money is the most important thing, hence the for profit motivation for education, huge bonuses, to keep allegedly excellent leadership. All the while, the foot soldiers,and ordinary run of the mill workers are continually squeezed, and forced to take pay cuts and do more with less, so that the "haves" can become "have even mores." It is that kind of thinking that has gotten our nation into the fix it is presently in. Money is not the end of everything and should not be the main motivation for an education, or an educational institution, or for its leaders to lead. If that is all that is keeping them here, then they should go. There has to be something more, or all you get is what we have now here at UT and in our nation. We do not need to have Pottersville here at UT or in our country. Let's choose Bedford Falls and wrest control of our institutions from all the Henry Potters that are strangling them to death with their cold, clammy, greedy fingers. To those who think money is the end of everything, to the self-congratulating, self-affirming cliques that govern UT and the other vital institutions of our nation, to those who choose to pay themselves the "market values" they themselves assert they are worth at the expense of the little guy, I say "Don't let the door hit you." Let persons of honor, dedication, and values that go beyond their pocketbooks take their place. Let's see more George and Mary Baileys take their place to restore decency to our nation in place of the obscenity that crass materialism has brought us.